I’m guessing most of us have read at least one book where the author goes undercover and then writes of His experience. Where, in order to really understand the subject matter . . . to fully appreciate the experience . . . to know, first hand, the implications of a situation . . . they disguise themselves and place themselves fully inside the world they want to understand and eventually write about. Though in a slightly different sense, I read this morning of an Author who undertook such a mission. Not just a “writer/author”, but an “originator/author” . . . One, who through His “undercover experience”, became the source of everlasting redemption . . . this morning I was re-introduced to the Author of eternal salvation.

“[Christ], in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” (Hebrews 5:7-9).

“In the days of His flesh” aka “undercover” aka “wonder and awe.” The Son of God . . . eternally One with Father and Spirit . . . God, very God . . . Creator . . . Sustainer . . . Forever Potentate . . . locked Himself in to our time and space continuum for 33 years, becoming flesh. Immanuel . . . God with us . . . self-divested of His heavenly glory. He, who’s name is above every name, made Himself of no reputation . . . taking the form of a bondservant . . . coming in the likeness of men . . . found in appearance as a man . . . undercover to the nth degree.

Not a distant observer in the shadows, but a full-on participant in the human experience . . . knowing first hand the anguish and desperation that leads to offering up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears. Think on that one a bit . . . Jesus crying out to the One who was able to save Him from death . . . tears streaming down His face . . . voice raised with pleading urgency . . . heard by the Father . . . learning obedience by the things He suffered. It’s kind of mind-boggling, isn’t it? He who created the human experience, determined to fully enter into that experience so that He might completely know what we know . . . even unto tears . . . even unto loud cries . . . even unto “Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done” . . . even unto death, even death on a cross.

Oh the depths to which the Son of God went in order to “qualify” to pen the path home . . . in order to inscribe the way of return . . . in order to become the Author of eternal salvation.

He is salvation’s source . . . He literally wrote the book on the problem and the remedy of sin and death. Forever penned in red is the triumphant cry, “It is finished!” Eternally secured, the way for man to enter into unfettered communion with God . . . secured through the “days of His flesh” and what “He learned” by the things He suffered.

Oh, to be reminded that I literally owe Him my life because He went undercover. To reflect afresh on the meaning and implications of His “in the flesh” experience. To bow in renewed appreciation of what the Son of God endured so that the love of God could be known.

Thank You Jesus for going undercover!